1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to devices for winding rope, wire, cable, and other elongated flexible elements into a coil, and particularly to an automatic coiling machine that coils the flexible element to a desired height or diameter.
2. Description of the Related Art
Fishermen and sailors use ropes and other lines for a wide variety of nautical purposes, such as securing anchors, hauling underwater traps, and capturing large fish (particularly, longline and pot fishing). Traps, anchors and other heavy loads are typically drawn in to the ship manually or with the aid of a power winch. Such manual operation is time consuming and tiring. Although a power winch draws the line in, the line easily becomes tangled, and the line wound around a drum, and must then be unwound and manually coiled for safe storage and transport thereof.
It would be desirable to provide a system for automatically drawing and coiling a line, thus relieving fishermen and sailors of the time and energy required by manually drawing in and coiling the lines. Thus, an automatic coiling machine solving the aforementioned problems is desired.